


Merit Badge

by bmouse



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Background Slash, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-25 17:17:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1656284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse/pseuds/bmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Philanthropy, whatever the name implied, was not actually an organization for "helping" people in that way. Still, when 5 months after the Big Shell mission Raiden turns up on Snake and Otacon's doorstep in Alaska he isn't turned away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My understanding of the MGS2 -> MGS4 timeline is pretty hazy at best. I confess, I just wanted to write dysfunctional secret agent found family semi-fluff.

_Seriously, where am I going to put the damn kid?_

Snake's not really surprised Otacon let him stay. He hasn't seen Raiden being properly pathetic since the incident with the seagulls but he's sure the kid can do that trick regardless of what he's been up to lately. If he's honest with himself, the primary reason’s pragmatic. Another pair of hands, gun, sword is another reason to never let Hal into the field on the missions. So he ends up shoving a sleeping bag at the blearily-blinking wannabe god of thunder, who’s still swaying from the NYC-to-Juno jetlag and sends him off to the shed with the dogs. There’s a burner stove in there somewhere, and the woodpile’s always kept high. If he doesn't like it he'll just have to deal.

The kid deals pretty well, so well that Snake feels like he's taken in a rescue-stray from the kennels, putting it with the rest of the team to see if it'll mesh. Raiden's in the kitchen most mornings having done battle with the stove to get all four ranges going, fixing campfire breakfasts: grilled cheese, egg sandwiches or toast with that slightly sheepish air of "I owe you one, thanks for letting me crash even though we don't have much in common except that one clusterfuck of a mission. And our horrible 'family'. But I'm too traumatized to mention it." 

Hal's initially ecstatic to get out of dish duty but by the end of the week they're running out of odd jobs to do around the place. When that happens there’ll be no use pretending that he’s anything but staying long-term. Interpersonal friction; the expected bristle when an already crazy-insular world expands from two to three people mostly fails to manifest.

Frankly the kid fits in just a little too well. The dogs stop barking at him in record time. His washed-out coloring blends in with the snow to the point where it looks like an empty set of clothes is out chopping wood on what’s left of the lawn.

"Look" he says, stacking his armful of logs along the back wall of the shed, stopping to even them out afterwards like a true anal retentive. He’s fidgeting with the heavy chopper like it was a pencil, Snake wants to take it away before he starts chewing on the end. Poor bastard's still worried about getting kicked out, not even hiding it. 

"It's not like I'll compromise your location. The shell organization that was running the fake 'Foxhound' unit isn't exactly waiting for a postcard and well...” he rubs the back of his head “ 'Dear Rose, Please fax the divorce papers to Alaska' would be kind of a dead giveaway, right?"

Snake's tempted to say "You know, I've never been stupid enough to marry my tail. Especially _after_ she'd confessed" but figured it'd be toeing over the line into hypocrisy. Who hasn't done something stupid after one of the really bad missions; everything goes to shit and when you're the one left standing you just feel so alive. Meryl... well, anyway. 

Still, there's a couple things left to fix before he'd put this pup into the harness.

"I'll make you a deal.” he says.

Raiden’s expression slides into something effortlessly blank. "What deal?" 

"Meetings."

\- - -

"How was it?"

"Oh you know, about as well as it could have gone. They go around the circle. They get to me. I walk up to the mic and go:

‘Hello! I'm Jack, and I'm an alcoholic. I drink because I’ve been at war since I was six. The whole child-soldier shtick was thirteen years ago but I guess it screwed me up so bad I decided to pretend it never happened! And now I can’t un-pretend. And I can’t deal. My local warlord slash dad was pretty nice to me though. Until the war ended and he dumped me with some NGO’s because I guess I wasn't useful enough without my AK. Five months ago I had to kill him. 

If you had my life wouldn’t you drink? Yeah you would. You'd drink like a fish. 

Please don’t even ask about my wife.’

And then they all clapped very politely and the group leader lady gave me a chip.”

Snake gives him the eyebrow.

"Uh-huh.”

Shifting gears straight to 12-year-old (which Snake suspects will always be his default setting) the kid rolls his eyes, does a little ‘you’re no fun’ pout. Hell-of-a fake-out manoeuvre, really. You’d never believe this brat and his boy-band haircut could clear corridors with the best of them. 

"Well, no. I just...sat and listened mostly. Turns out you can have nothing but normal problems and still have a pretty crap life. Food for thought I guess"

"You find that comforting?"

Raiden shrugs, hefts the laundry basket and discretely runs away down the steps to the basement. "Not really!" he yells over his shoulder when he’s just a pale indistinct shape under the lightbulb at the bottom of the stairs. "But ask me again after then next one!"

To his credit, he sticks with it. Even when serious withdrawal sets in without the cushion of the flat old beers that Snake’s seen him sneaking from the meat-fridge. It starts showing itself as a fine tremble in his hands. Hal takes over the dishes again with a pitying look when the kid’s morning coffee leapfrogs out of his hands and onto his socks and he takes three times the time it should have taken to pick up all the shards, swearing loudly.

At sunset he comes back from un-harnessing and rubbing down the dogs to see Jack grimly sweating through sword drills. Points for stubbornness. It’s a pretty pathetic showing - that same strike that he remembered stopping five inches inside an Arsenal Tengu’s chest would barely take a chip off one of the fenceposts now. No mystical inborn warrior instinct or whatever Hal starts blabbing about after one too many Gundam episodes is enough to hold your hand steady when the nerves disagree. He’s impressed in spite of himself that the sword hasn’t gone flying across the lawn yet. At least, until he comes closer and sees how the kid’s duct-taped his fingers around the hilt. 

Snake knows that the world he belongs to has a pretty strict policy of “No Well-Adjusted People Need Apply”, and though his missions are now theoretically about helping people ( by ensuring a lack of giant nuclear-capable walking tanks in their vicinity) experience clearly suggests against getting any further into this particular “helping” aspect. 

Philanthropy, whatever the name implies, is not that kind of organization. He’s not a doctor. Hal’s technically a doctor but it’s the useless techie kind. Neither of them’s anything close to a shrink. Combat utility aside he shouldn’t take an interest in whether Jack kicks drinking or whether Jack lives past Christmas.

Eventually it becomes routine, becomes a ritual. Greeting the kid at the door, buying an extra pack at the general store to keep up with their exchange rate. A cigarette for every chip.

\- - -

Sometimes 3 am isn’t kind to either of them.

“Hey…is it raining?” 

Outside the snow is fluffy white flurries bisected into squares by the window frame. Individual flakes pick up the light from the porch and rise with the wind like fireflies, unexpectedly drowned in the blue liquid night.

“No.”

He picks up Hal’s tranq gun from the cleaning cloth and doesn’t miss the hungry way Jack’s eyes follow it as he checks the action on the slide, pops the mag. No point asking how long since the kid’s had any real sleep. 

“What’s wrong with the medicine cabinet?” Hal’s the sensible one who just goes to the pharmacy and gets sleep-aids like a normal civilian. They should have some left, he hasn’t needed them in a while.

Jack stares at his feet, flexes bare, bone-white toes against the old carpet.

“I err, really wouldn’t trust myself around pills right now.” 

If he had the energy he’d be pacing but as it is he’s just wandering around the living room, missing their packing-crate chairs and radio gear by inches.

“Look, I don’t know why it’s been like _months_ and I’m _fine_ and then this week when I lie down I see him jumping off the building like a bad movie edit, OK? Please.”

He used to dream about Liquid burning. 

Snake lets him shuffle forward until he’s in just the right spot to fall onto the couch and shoots him with the tranq gun. In the morning Hal doesn’t ask questions and just covers him up with an old dog-hair-covered blanket. Jack sleeps for 34 hours.

 

-


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey here's chapter 2, it's all for you hypocriticalasshole.tumblr.com! Theres about one more chapter left but I wanted to post what I had just to try and get momentum back on this fic. More dysfunctional super agent family if you're into that kind of thing.

All of his sense of faith in the original Foxhound has long since evaporated but even now Snake can’t find too much fault in their training schedule. Combat and he had been acclimatized to each other in an orderly timeline. Each type of physical and psychological conditioning was adjusted to his developing mind: orders and discipline when his changing body left him eager for consistency, introducing Fox - a mentor and role model at the age when he’d be most inclined to hero worship.

Whenever he tried to assemble a stat sheet on the kid he always ran into a profound sense of “out of order.”  
A guerrilla war fought by local irregulars and Solidus’ half-baked mercenaries must have been a death knell for discipline. First kill - too young. Command experience - too young, to the point where a taking orders from someone else would be distasteful but taking charge might leave him paralyzed remembering anyone who’s ever died on his watch. 

Subconsciously he’d been bucking the Colonel’s command long before the AI had started acting suspicious. Then again that’s why they’d picked him. ‘Jack Sears’ didn’t even have the most impressive VR test scores in their batch of dummy ‘Foxhound’ agents. He was selected based on a personal connection with the target and a history of exploitable mental instability.

The kid was 26 now - early middle age in agent dog years, and these were substantial problems that it was too late to fix. Now he’d work best as a solo operative anyway.

Then again neither him or Hal were really joiners. Maybe that’s why they started their own club. 

Who else but Hal would start an organization for hunting Metal Gear. He was humoring the guy at first. Honestly, Hal seemed to be in bad shape after Shadow Moses but he had an unflagging ideal, a gassed-up old Toyota, and working credit cards. Snake had not been in a place to look a gift extraction point in the mouth. Philanthropy’s first planned 'mission' had also coincided with Snake's own few objectives, but if once was happenstance and twice - coincidence - then fifteen missions and living with the guy was surely a habit. With all the progress they made he still didn't _believe_ exactly. They were probably just shoveling shit uphill, but Hal believed enough for the two of them and Snake did his job. 

And now it was time for another one. As much as it gave lie to his original thoughts about keeping the kid he looked at Jack( sleeping better and flexing his toes on the couch and his hands still wobbling a little, making a jagged red line in the dark when he put the cigarette in the ashtray) and decided he should sit this one out. Hal, bless him, understood perfectly. 

“Yes, it's a small target. Two people will be more unobtrusive.” he says casually, packing his tech bag and fiddling with the straps of the bulletproof vest that goes under his oversized sweater. Snake even gets him to carry a Beretta now. Ah, the beauty of compromise in a long-term working relationship. 

“We’re going to check out a base. Recon only, maybe a little light BnE. You're sitting this one out. We'll be back in less than 72 hours.”

Really it should take twenty four but Hal always wants to take the detour to Anchorage on the way back this time of year. Maybe because it's three weeks from Christmas and they decorate the streets all nice. It satisfies some strange human need for light in the winter that Snake is proud to have learned to recognize in other people. Anyway the airport crowds make for another good layer of cover.

Of course he doesn't foresee how Jack would take it. Whatever acclimating effect Hal’s had on him, predicting the human variable will never be his strong point. 

"You're benching me." Jack says flatly, calm in the face and hurt around the eyes. 

"You're not cleared yet, your hands still shake.”

"I'll be vanguard then, hard to miss with a four foot radius." 

"There'll be others." 

“I'll do anything you say."

“Jack, there'll be other missions, we have a lot planned after Christmas..." Hal tries to cut in . 

"You don't have to kill people to stay here." he says.

Both of them turn and stare at him. 

“You don’t have to help us kill people either.” 

There's already an aisle seat in coach waiting for him and he hates those little cramped plastic-smelling buckets with no leg room so the less damn drama right now the better. 

"Your rent is dishes, and walking the dogs, and keeping the woodpile up. Dust all of Hal’s little robot statues if that makes you happy - I’ll sneeze less. Now we'll be back soon, and if you get really bored you can check all the caulking in the windows before February decides to freeze all our balls off." 

Jack still triple checks his gear and cleans Hal’s Beretta and makes them both lunch. He's subdued when they leave but not unhappy exactly. Snake grunts and Hal, mushball that he is, hugs him goodbye. 

It was the hug that did it. Snake thinks, later. Whenever Hal Emmerich starts liking something more than the universe thinks he ought to some great black lever begins to move and eventually some great black hammer swings down.


End file.
